1. Field
A touch screen device and method of operating a touch screen device are disclosed herein.
2. Background Art
Portable digital equipment, such as, for example, MP3 players, portable multimedia players (PMP), personal digital assistants (PDA), notebook computers or the like which are able to execute, for example, MP3 files (e.g., audio files), video files (e.g., avi files) and the like store a plurality of MP3 files and/or video files and play the files selected at the request of a user. In addition to essential data, a variety of additional information on the relevant file(s), such as, for example, title and singer information, is contained and recorded as tag information in the MP3 files and/or video files.
Selection and playback of these audio or video files may be done by manipulating keys on a keypad provided with the digital equipment. For example, files may be selected and played back one by one, a plurality of files may be selected at one time and sequentially played back, or a file may be selected from a plurality of files and repeatedly played back based on user preferences.
Because it is preferable that the aforementioned MP3 player, PMP, PDA and the like have as large a display as possible, touch screens have been employed as a user information input device instead of the conventional keypad. A touch screen may function as both a display and an input device, thus allowing information to be input or selected using, for example, a finger or stylus pen and the relevant information to be displayed based on the input or selection. When a list of audio or video files is displayed on a touch screen, a user may touch and select desired files from the file list, and the selected files will be played back by a predetermined program (e.g., a music playback program, Windows Media Player and the like).
If there is an undesired music file next to the file currently being played back in the list, the undesired file is skipped and the next music is thus selected. However, if there are at least two or more undesired files in the list, it is inconvenient to select and skip the relevant music files one by one in order to skip all the undesired music files.
Further, if files to be executed are spaced apart from a current position within the list, the files must be located by scrolling through the list on the screen. A scroll bar displayed at one side of the screen may be touched to perform a scrolling operation. However, the scroll speed is always kept at a constant level, resulting in a slow, tedious process when scroll length is long or the scroll is stopped beyond a desired position when the scroll length is short.